


bookselling

by elizajane



Series: and behold, it was so very good [4]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 21:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19876723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Really, Aziraphale thinks, it's a wonder anythingbutsex gets done here on Earth. He hasn’t been giving humans enough credit for their self-discipline.





	bookselling

Aziraphale looks up from his desk as the sound of wind chimes heralds the front door of the shop swinging open.

"I am so _terribly_ sorry," Dr. Nasreen Hyland says, a harried note in her voice as she shoulders open the door. She’s the first human to enter the shop since he’s descended from the flat with a cup of tea in hand. The bookshop is choosy, and only customers who need to find the storefront do. _Why_ they need the shop is not always entirely clear, often requiring repeat visits. Aziraphale hadn’t established his business with these parameters in mind, but given that the point of human concepts like _overhead_ and _profit margin_ have always escaped him, he and the shop have found themselves more or less in agreement on business philosophy. Nasreen, a book historian, had made the cut several years previous and been a regular since. She had emailed Aziraphale several days prior promising to bring in some estate sale discoveries for his standing right-of-first-refusal. He always gave just a bit above what she was expecting, which he thought most definitely counted as a minor act of grace.

"There was a lorry overturned at Seven Dials. Chickens flapping about everywhere." She heaves the cardboard box she’s carrying onto the counter in front of Aziraphale. The sides bulge rather alarmingly. "I hope -- that is, should I have called to reschedule?"

"Oh, no! No, I mean --" Aziraphale smooths down the front of his light cardigan and pushes his spectacles up his nose. He feels suddenly certain she can see from the look on his face that he's had three orgasms already this morning and has been sitting at his computer contemplating the particulars of a fourth. Really, Aziraphale thinks, it's a wonder anything _but_ sex gets done here on Earth. He hasn’t been giving humans enough credit for their self-discipline. 

"I've been looking forward -- you mentioned an early printing of Ashbee?” He stands up and moves to the outward-facing side of the counter. “And several of Amanda Frisby's lesser-known works?" Her gothic novels had been favorites of his since she first appeared on the scene in back in the eighteen-aughts ... but that had been over two hundred years ago now, and not everyone in the twenty-first century appreciated a good gothic romance like Aziraphale felt they should. Nasreen had come through for him several times, though, and he'd been able to add several Frisbys to his own personal collection as well as place her books in the hands of deserving customers. He pulls the box across the counter and lifts open the flaps with a thrill of anticipation.

"Oh, yes, I knew you'd like those!" Nasreen looks up from rummaging through a voluminous handbag. "They're near the top but I brought a handful of others that might be of interest -- I’ll just run up the street for a coffee? While you look them over? My daughter's headmistress has just called and I need to --"

Aziraphale nods in agreement, already pulling books out of the box as Nasreen moves toward the front door, mobile phone already pressed to her ear. As the door chimes with Nasreen’s passing, a mousy young student slips in; a human Aziraphale doesn’t recognize but who must be the right sort because they’ve found the front door. As they pause, hesitantly, before the table of lovingly curated selections of Edwardian adventure tales, Crowley sidles in from the stockroom.

Aziraphale had left Crowley fresh-washed and working his way through a dozen soft-boiled eggs. Since Aziraphale's descent to the shop Crowley had slithered back into his black jeans and a loud t-shirt from Glastonbury '99. He's wearing his hair short today, splashed with shocking poison green and lemon yellow, gel holding it in the style Aziraphale has always privately labeled _sinfully_ _insouciant scruff_. His sunglasses are firmly in place and Aziraphale feels the pang of disappointment he always feels when he can't see Crowley's eyes. Crowley passes by the student as she moves deeper into the store, and she suddenly trips over a precarious pile of paperback pulps that hadn't been there a moment before.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she says, yanking back the hand she’s flung out to steady herself against the closest bookshelf which promptly discovers it has a loose screw and collapses, tipping more titles onto the floor. "I didn't mean to --"

"My fault," Crowley says blithely before Aziraphale makes it around the end of the counter to assist with the clean-up. "I was restocking that section just yesterday and must have left those by mistake. If you'd just take these over there --" He drops an armload of paperbacks into her hands and points her in the direction of a certain aisle that has Aziraphale narrowing his eyes.

"What have you --" he whispers as the girl mutters another round of apologies and hurries off in the direction Crowley has indicated. "-- my dear, I do not recall purchasing any of those titles!" Crowley shoves his hands in his jeans pockets and grins. Aziraphale sees his cheek twitch in the way that means Crowley is winking at him behind the sunglasses.

"Yeah, well --" Crowley gives an exaggerated shrug. "You _should_ purchase them. Classics. Thanks to the manga I just handed her, she's about to have a messy and terrifying crisis of sexual identity. You'll make sure it all works out in the end. We’re a great … team. That way." He tips his head forward to give Aziraphale just the briefest glimpse of a leer over the top of his sunglasses and Aziraphale forgets the necessity of oxygen for a heartbeat, then two. Crowley pushes his sunglasses back up and leans forward to ghost the word _breathe_ across Aziraphale's cheek before sliding past him along the aisle and stalking toward the front door. "I'm off in search of a coffee," he calls back over his shoulder. "Don't have too much fun without me!"

Aziraphale watches his beloved slouch along the pavement outside the store’s plate-glass windows, feeling the hum of _CrowleyCrowleyCrowley_ recede from near-deafening awareness to a level that translates into the reassuring knowledge that Crowley is in the neighborhood feeling pleased with himself. 

Crowley has been wreaking havoc in Aziraphale's bookshop since immediately after Gutenberg's press lumbered into production. The disorder introduced by Crowley's presence is a near-guarantee that Aziraphale's tidy plans will career wildly off the track he has set them on. It's familiar; it’s exhilarating. And Aziraphale recognizes in a moment of clarity as his upended world settles -- like a kaleidoscope -- into a new, breathtaking pattern of color, that it's Crowley repeatedly and without fanfare dropping the opportunity for Aziraphale to work small, mundane miracles like a treasure hunt of tiny gifts in Aziraphale's path.

"Oh," he murmurs to himself, glancing over at the student in the corner quietly having a revelation over a furtively-opened book. " _Oh_." 

* * *

The rest of the morning is a quiet one for the shop. Aziraphale makes his way back to the counter and spends twenty minutes sorting through the box of potential acquisitions which allows him to settle into the shape of this new world where traces of Crowley are everywhere and he's allowed to acknowledge that this is _deliberate_ without fearing Crowley will stop dropping by, will stop texting him with questions about takeaway (texts from Crowley are the only texts Aziraphale ever receives), will stop accepting Aziraphale's invitations to join him for a weekend in Cornwall, or wordlessly encouraging Aziraphale's need to touch and be touched. The books -- their familiar scents of paper, ink, glue, and deterioration; the act of considering where they might live in the orderly rows of his personal bookshelves or a particular customer whom he might tuck this or that title away for -- help steady him. And steady, deep inside him, the awareness of Crowley nearby, and content, and soon to return never once falters.

Nasreen reappears shortly before 11 o'clock with a tall, frothy iced coffee in her hand that Aziraphale watches anxiously for the duration of their negotiation over purchase prices for the volumes he's selected from the cardboard box. Nasreen has a well-ordered mind when it comes to the world of book history and the antiquarian book trade but details like where she's last seen her mobile phone or whether she's about to set her coffee down on an actual _surface_ rather than thin air have been known to escape her. They have a diverting and stimulating conversation about the possible English influences of the American author Isabella Alden, and Nasreen promises to keep her eye out for Aldens in decent condition during her upcoming trip to the United States. Aziraphale wraps a copy of _The Woodbegoods_ in brown butcher paper for Nasreen’s daughter Amita and waves off Nasreen’s attempt to pay. “It’s a gift. I insist.”

After Nasreen leaves -- with a much lighter (and angelically reinforced) cardboard box holding the (few) books Aziraphale had decided against purchasing -- the young human reappears looking ... well, it puts Aziraphale in mind of the moment on 4 October 1728, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when it had finally dawned upon him that the things human beings do with one another when in love or in lust were things that _he and Crowley_ might do with one another. And that it was quite _definitely_ true that he -- Aziraphale -- would very much like to do at least some of those things with Crowley.

That it had taken them nearly three centuries to find a way to communicate this mutual desire effectively is beside the point. He recognizes in this young human compatriot in love (or, he admits, possibly lust) and tries to beam at her in a reassuring manner. She backs up a step.

"You've found something you'd like to, erm, purchase? My dear?" He knows he shouldn't go around these days saying _my dear_ to just anyone but it's a difficult habit to break and humans are just _so dear_ in all of their particulars. Especially on a day like today.

Wordlessly she steps up to the counter and places two volumes of manga on the polished wood between them.

"Now those," Aziraphale says, adjusting his glasses and pretending to hunt for a pencilled price he knows isn't there on the inside covers. "Now those are an _excellent_ purchase. I was quite delighted to find them; rare imports, you know. For the discerning reader. Well spotted." The child is groping now in her rucksack, pink about the cheeks and avoiding his gaze. "However, you'll see there's some foxing about the edges, and --" he _tsk tsks_ as he adjusts some key pages in each volume so as to have turned-down corners, "--someone's been naughty and dog-eared the pages. Under the circumstances I feel I can't charge you more than a fiver for the set."

Money exchanges hands, Aziraphale slips a bookmark in the top book, and the girl tucks the purchases in her knapsack and departs with a nearly inaudible thank you. Aziraphale watches her cross the lane, hoping to see her in the bookshop again before too long.

The shop is empty of customers for a stretch after that. Aziraphale makes himself a cup of tea with the electric kettle behind the counter and adds the new books destined for the shop to his computer inventory. Albert the postman comes by and on his heels two New Zealanders on holiday the shop had decided would benefit from Aziraphale's collection of nineteenth-century travel guides. By the time they depart, Aziraphale has a text from Crowley on his mobile phone:

_u hungry?_

Whether Crowley had been responsible for texting or merely an early adapter is a question to which Aziraphale has never pried loose a definitive answer. It's incontrovertible, however, that less than a week after the first text-capable mobile had become available on the general market Crowley had purchased two and programmed one to play the _Doctor Who_ theme circa 1973 every time he texted Aziraphale at the number.

_I would be delighted to lunch with you._

Aziraphale now has his sixth such device, each of them purchased and customized by Crowley. Their text log is a history of exchanges in which Crowley brutalizes the printed word and Aziraphale responds with carefully correct and complete sentences.

_fancy curry pie?_

_I'd be delighted to join you. Shall we meet in St. James Park?_

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently the roundabout at Seven Dials is one of London's [most beautiful roundabouts](https://londonist.com/2016/08/london-s-most-beautiful-roundabouts).
> 
> For those who may not have caught the reference, Amanda Frisby is the emerging gothic novel sensation in K. J. Charles' _[Band Sinister](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/39345944)_. If you enjoy a good historical m/m poly romance with a surfeit of queer community this is a book you should read immediately.
> 
> Oh, and Glastonbury '99: "[Requiem for a Wardrobe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RAB96S7BAw)."


End file.
